Justice Watch: The Alliance for Justice Blog

April 2009

Senator Richard Lugar (R-IN) announced his support for the nomination of Dawn Johnsen to head the Office of Legal Counsel at the Department of Justice.

The senator went on the record with Sylvia Smith of the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette following a press briefing by Indiana University Maurer School of Law faculty members Dean Lauren Robel and Professor Aviva Orenstein. Dean Robel and Professor Orenstein discussed a letter signed by more than 70 law professors from around Indiana urging Senator Lugar to support confirmation of Dawn Johnsen. “We know Dawn Johnsen quite well, we have worked with her for 13 years, we’ve read her scholarship, we’ve engaged with her around the issues that are important to this office, and we have absolutely no doubt about her qualifications for this office,” declared Dean Robel. “We have special areas of expertise: we know law and we know Dawn,” added Professor Orenstein. “And in both those areas, I think that… Senator Lugar would appreciate our knowledge of what the job requires and how it should be executed as well as our knowledge of who Dawn is as a person.”

Take Action: Call your senators and ask them to call for a vote on Johnsen’s nomination.

A vote has not been scheduled on Johnsen’s nomination. With all of the important issues facing our government, President Obama needs the highly qualified Johnsen at work leading the Office of Legal Counsel. The Senate should schedule a vote and confirm Prof. Johnsen without further delay.

Are protections for voting rights still needed after President Obama’s historic election?

Will archconservatives on the Court use this case as a vehicle to turn its back on voting rights, re-assert “states’ rights” and reject the federal oversight needed to protect all voters?

Supreme Court hears arguments today.

The landmark Voting Rights Act (VRA), originally enacted into law in 1965, establishes comprehensive safeguards against discrimination in voting based on race, color, national origin or language status. The Act is widely regarded as one of the most successful laws ever enacted by Congress.

The major question the Supreme Court confronts is exactly what standard Congress must use in federal oversight of state and local voting.

Today marks the point when the average woman’s wages finally catch up with what the average man earned last year.

Women still earn only 78 cents for every dollar earned by a man, and for women of color, the numbers are even worse. Equal Pay Day is an important reminder of this persistent wage gap and the urgent need to take action to ensure that women receive equal pay for equal work.

We’ve made some progress in the fight for equal pay – the first bill President Obama signed into law was the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act. That law reversed a damaging Supreme Court decision, which had severly limited the rights of women challenging discriminatory pay..But the Ledbetter legislation just returned the law to what it had been for decades, before the Roberts Court interfered. We need to pass new legislation to win the fight for fair pay.

The Senate must pass the Paycheck Fairness Act S. 182, a vital next step toward achieving equal pay for equal work by amending the Equal Pay Act. President Kennedy signed the Equal Pay Act 45 years ago, making it illegal for employers to pay women less than men for the same work. But loopholes in the law and weak enforcement from the courts allowed many discriminatory practices to continue. The Paycheck Fairness Act addresses these concerns and equips women with the necessary tools with which to fight unequal pay.

Last week we told you about this case in our Full Court Press post. You can read the full transcript from today’s oral arguments here.

Almost two years ago, in a 5-4 decision, Chief Justice Roberts, newly appointed by President George W. Bush, wrote a decision dismantling decades of precedent when he rejected efforts by Seattle and Louisville to ensure that their schools were racially integrated. Justice Kennedy joined the four reliable opponents of any remedies for past segregation but left the door open for a future case in which the goal of integrating schools might allow a school district to take race into account in assigning students to schools. Today, the Court heard arguments in a case from New Haven, Connecticut, that may test if that door remains open at all, or will be shut forever against efforts to promote racial diversity — this time in the workplace rather than schools.

Also worth reading is Dahlia Lithwick’s post about the case argued in front of the Supreme Court yesterday, Safford United School District v. Redding

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